


A New Begining

by Willow_Ford



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Buddhism, Depression, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Family Loss, Grief/Mourning, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Loss of Identity, Mental Health Issues, Monks, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Relationship(s), Reincarnation, Second Shinobi War, Shinto, Tags May Change, Third Shinobi War, Toaism, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:54:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28889433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willow_Ford/pseuds/Willow_Ford
Summary: When she died she lost everything. That should have been the end.But it wasn't.Reborn into the cold and cruel world of Shinobi; Ren will have to reinvent everything she is if she wants to even stand a chance in this world.
Kudos: 3





	A New Begining

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Naruto. 
> 
> Also, If I fuck up the timeline let me know

I am told I am lucky that the monks found me when they did. I am told that I likely would have died without their intervention. I have little trouble accepting the truth of the latter statement, it is only the former which I find myself adverse to. I do not feel lucky. A part of me wishes that they had just left me there to die; the other part of me is too deadened to care. I shouldn’t be here. I don’t want to be here. Why am I here? Why am I alone?! What the fuck did I ever do to deserve this?! Why do I remember? I don’t want to remember…

But I do.

I remember how his little face lit up when we told him we were going to see the redwoods. I never understood what it was about those trees that made them so special to him. As far as I was concerned all that mattered was that he was happy, and that we were together. I remember his doctor saying that if we were going to take that trip we should do it soon while his condition was still relatively stable. The night before we left I held my wife in my arms as she wept. I would cry too, but only after she had fallen asleep. I had to be strong for both of us, hearing me cry might break her. I wanted him to be happy, but taking this trip felt like accepting that our days left together were numbered, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Ours was an early flight, which meant that he would hopefully sleep through most of it. I slept through the first three hours of the flight, and spent most of hour four conversing quietly with my wife. five hours and thirty minutes into our flight a large explosion sounds. The following minutes are a blur of panic and terror. We were helpless, and there was nothing I could do to protect them. I didn’t try to hide my fear as I turned to my son and said, “No matter what baby, Mommy loves you!”

If he responded, I never heard, because not even a second later our plane hit the ground.

* * *

This world is not like the one I left. There are similarities, to be sure, but one could never be mistaken for the other. The monks that found me ended up taking me in. It is through their teachings that I have retained any semblance of sanity.

My first year with them was miserable. My grief consumed me, every waking moment serving as a reminder of what I had lost. So I try to distract myself. I focus on learning the language. It is difficult, but I persevere. The monks help, telling me words and trying to explain them through a mixture of the ones I already know and a crude imitation of sign language. I was not the only child to reside within the monastery. I was however the only child who never cried. At first my behavior was brushed off, afterall, I seemed just as inquisitive as any other child. As my understanding of the language grew, I interacted less and less with the monks. Once more, my behavior was brushed off, but overtime the differences between myself and the other children became increasingly apparent. My general apathy towards the world around me led my carares to become increasingly concerned. Eventually I was brought before a monk by the name of Seiji. He was a medic, and they hoped he would be able to identify the cause of my abnormal behavior. I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on around me and at this point my grief had consumed my thoughts once more, leaving me entirely unaware of what was going on around me.

I do not know who was more surprised to meet who upon entering my mindscape.

“Well, you most certainly are not the child whose mind I entered. Might I inquire as to whom I am speaking to?”

At the sound of his voice I raised my head and looked towards him. I would later learn that my mind had not manifested as one typically does. Rather than a mindscape I had manifested before him hugging my knees to my chest sat atop a pile of thousands of singed and torn polaroid's.

“I am the child, but this body is no longer the one I walk in. You may call me Cameron.”

He had questions, I could tell, but I didn’t feel like answering. So, instead, I showed him. I showed him my childhood home, and the street corner I used to wait for the bus at. I showed him prom and graduation. I showed him how I met my wife, the place we had our first date, the time she fell asleep at the beach and had a tanline of her sunglasses. I showed him our wedding, how breathtaking she looked as the sunlight shone down on her through the stained glass windows. I showed him that adorable sleepy smile she gave me in the mornings. I showed him us meeting our son for the first time, , how we would each hold a hand and swing him between us while walking. I showed my baby's first day of school, how me and my wife cried and peppered him with kisses while rambling on about how he was ‘growing up too fast’. I showed him the doctors appointments, the chemo, the hospital stays, and the day when the doctor told us we were just prolonging the inevitable. I showed him the end, how scared we were, how helpless. I needed him to understand, even if only a little, what I was going through. At the end of it, Seiji turned to me, understanding shown in his eyes.

“You are in pain, child. It consumes you. I believe that you remember this life from before for a reason, though why I do not know. Just as I believe that you remember for a reason, I too believe that we found you for a reason. And so I offer you training. Become my student and I shall teach you to master your chakra as well as your mind. I can instruct you in the arts of kenjutsu and taijutsu. I know that you will be unable to accept the doctrine that the rest of us follow. I know you will one day leave us. But, for the time we have together, no matter how long that may be, let me teach you so I may ease your journey.”

At the time I was less interested in whatever divine journey he believed me to have and more interested in a way to distract myself from my pain. So I agreed.

When he left my mindscape Seiji declared that he would take me on as his student. He also announced that from that day forth my name would be Ren. I didn’t understand the significance at the time, but I would later learn that Ren meant ‘lotus’, and that the lotus was symbolic of, among other things, rebirth.

* * *

The years passed by and Seiji trained me just as he said he would. The very first thing he taught me was how to shape and organize my mindscape. He warned me that though the skill was not extremely common, there were others in this world with the ability to enter another's mind. He had seen enough of my memories from before to know that I had knowledge of technologies that this world was not ready for, and both he and I agreed it would be best that I had a defensible mindscape. It took months of intensive meditation, chakra control training, and planning before Seiji deemed me ready to begin the actual construction.

Seiji had explained to me that when in a mindscape most of what you see will be symbolic of a facet of that person's personality or overall mentality. The setting needed to align as much as possible with the person I would present myself as, while also being able to hide, protect, and repress certain aspects of who I once was. It was a time consuming task that was rarely ever done. Though it can be organized, trying to fully restructure a naturally formed adult mindscape was not possible without losing large portions of the persons personality. The reason it was seldom seen in children was because a single mistake could hinder future development and maturation of the child's mind. Seiji believes that he can minimize any risk that is not already negated by my circumstance. To begin the process I first had to enter a deep meditative trance. The trance would allow me access to the entirety of my mind; the conscious and subconscious. I had decided to manifest my mind in a forest. It took great concentration to weave my chakra into the landscape I had visualized in my mind's eye, but the end results were worth it.

I stood on a moss covered stone path, surrounded by impossibly wide trees that grew so high I could not see their tops. A fog lingered between the trees, growing increasingly thick the further from the path one wandered. I knew that had someone strayed too deep into the fog they would have lost their sense of direction, eventually finding themselves right back at the stone path from which they wandered. I continued down the stone path and eventually found myself in front of a small, tearoom. The structure's interior was as simple as its exterior, containing only tatami mat floors, an irori, and a quartet of cushions for seating. Beyond the tearoom lies a pond fed by a large waterfall. At the center of the pond, an exact copy of me sits in the lotus pose in deep meditation. It is within the waters of the pond that I had hidden my memories of before. Should my mind ever be violated, those memories will be safe, as the moment anyone comes in contact with the water everything they see from that point forward is of my design.

I was rather proud of the finished product, and I believe Seiji was too. It had taken roughly a year to finish the mindscape; 11 months of chakra control training and 1 month of actual construction. By this point I was about 2 ½ , and my combat training had just begun. It was late in the afternoon; Seiji and I had just finished a particularly brutal (for me) taijutsu training session. A week had passed since Seiji first began teaching and I was not optimistic about my progress. Our walk back was uneventful, but just before we would have parted ways to wash up for dinner, Seiji asked me a question.

“Ren, do you know what the symbols on the back of your neck mean?”

His question confused me, what symbols was he talking about?

“What symbols are you talking about? I can’t exactly see the back of my neck.”

He glanced towards me before he casually replied.

“The other monks have mentioned it to me before, there are a series of markings, tattoos if you will, that run from the nape of your neck to your tailbone. They believe it to be either another language or a code of sorts. When you next get a chance maybe take a look, I’d be interested to hear the story behind it if you do in fact recognize it.”

With those words I nodded and we headed our separate ways. After Seiji had pretty much declared me his apprentice, I was moved from the sleeping quarters I shared with the other children and given my own room. It was far from extravagant, but it was mine and that was enough for me. I undressed and approached a basin and water pitcher that I had been set out this morning. Wetting a rag I began wiping myself down as best I could, when I got to my back, I twisted myself as best I could in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what Seiji had mentioned earlier. When I saw it I was shocked. It was a tattoo. More specifically, it was a tattoo I’d had on my old body. I was confused, and later at dinner when I told Seiji where it came from he seemed to share that feeling.

“I’d have to agree that it does seem odd that you would have a tattoo from… Before. If you recognize the markings though, what do they mean?”

“It's from a religious text from Before. The language it is in is called Hebrew, and it roughly translates to ‘You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself’. I was never religious Before, but I liked the sentiment.” I can’t say for sure, but I think I saw a hint of approval in his eyes.

* * *

I couldn’t tell you exactly when it began, but with the aid of my mindscape and the passage of time, the hole left by my family began to heal. And I let it.

* * *

One of the things I had learned while living in the monastery was that while birthdays were acknowledged, they weren’t really celebrated. So, when I turned three I was expecting the day to follow the same routine as always, and for the most part, it did.

As with everyday, we rose at dawn. When I first began training with Seiji, I had questioned why we woke so early. He told me it was so that we could greet the sun. My first instinct had been to inform him that the sun held no sentience therefore making this endeavor pointless. In the end I had decided to keep my mouth shut and simply leveled and unimpressed glare at him instead. Each morning he would lead me down a walkway onto a terrace where we would spend hours in meditation. Seiji says that it is important that I take the time to meditate in order to maintain my mindscape as well as train my chakra control. At noon we begin taijutsu training, and as always I am awful. My speed and dexterity has improved greatly since I began training. My movements become increasingly refined with each repetition of the katas I’ve been taught. The issue is my progress doesn't translate into the spars with Seiji. Each training session inevitably ends with an untouched Seiji escorting me back to my room while I turn into one giant bruise. Except for, this time, it didn’t. Well, I still lost and look like hell, but this time instead of immediately heading back towards our rooms, Seiji motions for me to sit beside him on the ground. Once I’d settled, he speaks,

“I was born into the Nakake clan. We were never a weak clan, but our lack of ambition and small size meant we were a little known one. When the First Shinobi war arrived the hidden villages sought any advantage over their enemies that they could get. My clan had been contracted to fight on the behalf of Iwagakure. When the war began my clan had twenty five members. When the war ended it had one. I was already in my forties when the war began and was along with another left behind to protect the women, children, and elderly. I had left the compound to purchase food at a nearby village. When I returned the compound had been ransacked and my family slaughtered. I returned to the nearby village and paid some laborers to bury the bodies. From there I made my way here in search of refuge. A year after the armistice was signed I returned to the compound to see if anyone had returned from their missions. When it was clear that no one had, I left. It's been more than twenty years and I haven’t been back since.”

A moment of silence passed between us before I spoke,

“I’m sorry.”

Without reacting or even acknowledging that I had spoken, Seiji turns to the bag at his side, and pulls out a scroll. “Before I left that last time I took something with me. This summons contract has been in my clan for generations. I want you to sign it.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, what'd ya think? Reviews are greatly appreciated!!


End file.
